Between 2006 and 2007, real median household income rose 1.3%, from $49,568 to $50,233 (see top chart above--a level not statistically different from the 1999 prerecession income peak ($50,641 in 1999 and $50,557 in 2000).

Hidden by "households": Obviously, "households" don't get paychecks, workers do. And while Census quintiles all contain identical numbers of households, they don't contain the same number of people or even workers, as Steve Conover explains:

A household has a group of people in it; most of those groups contain at least one specific person who earns a paycheck. The U.S. Census Bureau (in their "Current Population Survey") calls those people "Earners." The amount of money income received by a household depends to a great degree on the number of "earners" in that household.

When adjusted for household size, real median income per household member reached an all-time high of $19,546 in 2007, 65.6% higher than the $11,820 income per household member in 1967, and more than 2 times the unadjusted increase per household of 29.6%.

A rising mean income among the top 5, 10 or 20 percent has been routinely misinterpreted as indicating that income gains were confined to only that top group. In reality, rising incomes among those with incomes below the rising threshold have caused the definition of top income groups to exclude incomes that had formerly been among the top group. The mean average of income in top income groups can be pulled up by a few unusually high incomes at the top. But the average can also be pushed up from below by rising numbers of people moving up -- leaving what used to be considered a "middle class" income and "joining the ranks of the rich."

As I've previously shown, adjusting for the number of earners per household, and setting aside the top group, real median incomes are up, as Conover depicts:

According to a key Census Bureau measure, income inequality has been unchanged since 2000. The Census Bureau recently confirmed that no statistically significant change in the inequality measure occurred between 2000 and 2007, the last year for which data are available. The measure referred to here is known as the Gini coefficient, a standard gauge of income inequality published by the Census Bureau and widely used by economists and other researchers.